It’s the weekend, so what better time to write (rant?) on a thoroughly non-political topic today.

Trying to systematically and intelligently research and identify a particular type of restaurant in Overland Park – the whole KC metro, really – is proving to be a frustratingly difficult, if not impossible task.

I was hoping for a site where you could quickly and easily search restaurants by any combination of factors like location, price-range and entertainment (live music, etc). As it happens, tonight I’m looking for something fun and classy, in a medium price-range, in Overland Park, that features live music.

Now, maybe such a place doesn’t exist, but I have a feeling it does. The problem is there’s no systematic way to look for it. I tried the Restaurant Guide of Kansas City, but:

you can only search by one criteria at a time

you can’t specify certain areas of Johnson County

the summary description doesn’t include a link to the restaurant itself, so you can’t see more than the one picture provided by Guide

As I said, a frustrating experience.

I did call a couple friends of mine who have worked in the local service industry, and they did make a couple helpful suggestions.

3 responses to “Finding a restaurant shouldn’t be this difficult”

Thanks, Sean. Could be worth consulting in future searches, but it’s really pretty crude in a lot of ways. For instance, if you search BBQ, one of the responses is Dairy Queen. Can you get a BBQ sandwich at DQ? Maybe. But it’s not what you’re looking for when you’re looking for BBQ.